Perfect end for all-rounder

Sports writer for The Age

Icing on the cake: Lisa Sthalekar celebrates a stunning catch at the end of the West Indies' innings. Photo: AFP

WHEN Lisa Sthalekar left for India last month with the Australian women's national squad, she said winning a World Cup in the country of her birth, just four months after the team's World Twenty20 triumph, ''would be scripted very nicely''. It turned out to be even better.

First, the veteran all-rounder broke a key partnership by bowling West Indies captain Merissa Aguilleira with a textbook off-break that clipped the top of off-stump. Second, she claimed the wicket of big-hitting Deandra Dottin to all-but guarantee the Southern Stars' victory. Third, the last wicket came courtesy of her taking a stunning one-handed catch at full stretch just off the ground.

''I'll take one of those any day in a World Cup final to win it,'' she said from the team's change rooms in Mumbai just an hour after their sixth World Cup was won.

The 33-year-old announced this World Cup would be her last major international tournament, despite the Ashes series in England later this year. ''It was a real team effort, and to actually contribute and pick up a few key wickets [was great]. I've been hit by Dottin for plenty of sixes so it was quite sweet to take her wicket, and to take the catch for the final wicket was really special,'' Sthalekar said after her 187th and final international appearance.

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''I love these wickets, the type I want to roll up and take with me. There's a fair bit of turn for the spinners. To hit the top of off [for the wicket of Aguilleira] I couldn't ask for anything more.''

Before the World Cup Sthalekar said she was approaching a point in her 12-year career where she was having to decide when ''to let go of the game and allow these youngsters a chance to make their mark on international cricket''.

That reflection was partly triggered by a hectic 11-month period that began with last year's World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka and was to have ended with the tour of England, which required her to take significant amounts of unpaid leave from her job co-ordinating the development of junior female cricketers in NSW.

''I think this is the first time players have felt almost like professional cricketers. We've had that much cricket on … and I think our bodies are showing that because we're not suited to that much cricket. But it's also been good because as female cricketers I sometimes feel we train more than we play; now we've been playing more than we've been training. It's a good sign that things are moving in the right direction.''

Sthalekar, the first female player to make 1000 runs and take 100 wickets in one-dayers, will retire ranked second in the world among bowlers and all-rounders to end with a career international run tally of 3913 and wicket tally of 229.

Chief selector Julie Savage, asked last week about the prospect the World Cup would be Sthalekar's last international outing, confirmed she would leave a ''big'' hole but said the Stars had recovered from comparable blows in the recent past. Sthalekar is yet to decide whether she will continue to play for NSW.